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Direct voting and proxy voting

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  • James Green-Armytage

Abstract

I develop a hybrid of direct democracy and representative democracy in which each citizen may vote directly on each issue, or delegate his vote on any issue to a representative (that is, a proxy) of his own choosing. I construct both an axiomatic argument for such a system and an argument based on its ability to ameliorate the information problems inherent in both direct and representative democracy. I also propose practical measures for implementation, including new variations on existing proxy system proposals. These new variations include a ‘Dodgsonesque’ procedure, a proportional agenda-setting procedure, a provision for virtual committees, and a provision for continual consideration of issues. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Suggested Citation

  • James Green-Armytage, 2015. "Direct voting and proxy voting," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 26(2), pages 190-220, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:copoec:v:26:y:2015:i:2:p:190-220
    DOI: 10.1007/s10602-014-9176-9
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. James Green-Armytage, 2023. "A Dodgson-Hare synthesis," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 34(3), pages 458-470, September.
    2. Dhillon, Amrita & Kotsialou, Grammateia & Xefteris, Dimitris, 2021. "Information Aggregation with Delegation of Votes," SocArXiv ubk7p, Center for Open Science.
    3. Victoria Mooers & Joseph Campbell & Alessandra Casella & Lucas de Lara & Dilip Ravindran, 2022. "Liquid Democracy. Two Experiments on Delegation in Voting," Papers 2212.09715, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2024.
    4. Jacqueline Harding, 2023. "Proxy Selection in Transitive Proxy Voting," Papers 2307.02627, arXiv.org.
    5. Reshef Meir & Fedor Sandomirskiy & Moshe Tennenholtz, 2020. "Representative Committees of Peers," Papers 2006.07837, arXiv.org.
    6. Sang-Hyun Kim,, 2024. "Transitive delegation in social networks: Theory and experiment," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    7. Paul Harrenstein & Marie-Louise Lackner & Martin Lackner, 2019. "A Mathematical Analysis of an Election System Proposed by Gottlob Frege," Papers 1907.03643, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2020.
    8. Arnold Cédrick SOH VOUTSA, 2020. "Approval Voting & Majority Judgment in Weighted Representative Democracy," THEMA Working Papers 2020-15, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    9. Jacqueline Harding, 2022. "Proxy selection in transitive proxy voting," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 58(1), pages 69-99, January.
    10. Pivato, Marcus & Soh, Arnold, 2020. "Weighted representative democracy," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 52-63.
    11. Hans Gersbach, 2022. "New Forms of Democracy," CESifo Working Paper Series 10134, CESifo.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Proxy voting; Direct democracy; Participatory democracy; Deliberative democracy; Liquid democracy; Proportional representation; D7;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D7 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making

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